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Minimum element left from the array after performing given operations

Program to print N minimum elements from list of integers

Last Updated : 17 Jan, 2025

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Our task is to extract the smallest N elements from a list of integers.

For example, if we have a list [5, 3, 8, 1, 2] and want the smallest 3 elements, the output should be [1, 2, 3]. We’ll explore different methods to achieve this.

Using heapq.nsmallest

This method uses the nsmallest() function from the heapq module, which is optimized for finding the smallest elements efficiently.

Python

import heapq  # Input list a = [5, 3, 8, 1, 2]  # Number of smallest elements to extract n = 3  # Extract N smallest elements res = heapq.nsmallest(n, a) print(res)

Output

[1, 2, 3]

Explanation:

heapq.nsmallest function efficiently extracts the n smallest elements from the list using a heap-based algorithm.
This method is both fast and straightforward, making it the most efficient for this task.

Let’s explore some more methods and see how we can print N minimum elements from a list of integers in Python.

Table of Content

Using sorted
Using for loop

Using sorted

We can sort the list using the sorted() function and then use slicing to get the first n elements.

Python

# Input list a = [5, 3, 8, 1, 2] # Number of smallest elements to extract n = 3 # Sort the list and take the first N elements res = sorted(a)[:n] print(res)

Output

[1, 2, 3]

Explanation:

sorted() function sorts the entire list in ascending order.
By slicing the first n elements, we get the smallest values.
While simple, this method is less efficient for large lists as it involves sorting the entire list.

Using for loop

This method involves manually iterating through the list using a for loop to find the n smallest elements.

Python

# Input list a = [5, 3, 8, 1, 2]  # Number of smallest elements to extract n = 3  # Initialize an empty list to store the smallest elements res = []  # Make a copy of the original list to avoid modifying it b = a[:]  # Extract N smallest elements one by one for _ in range(n):     smallest = min(b)     res.append(smallest)     b.remove(smallest) print(res)

Output

[1, 2, 3]

Explanation:

We use the min() function to repeatedly find and remove the smallest element from the list.
The process is repeated n times to extract the required number of smallest elements.
This method is the least efficient due to the repeated scanning and modification of the list.

Minimum element left from the array after performing given operations

S

SaumyaBansal

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Article Tags :

Arrays
DSA
Python
School Programming
Technical Scripter
Python list-programs
python-list
school-programming

Practice Tags :

Arrays
python
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